DANCE REVIEW;A Visit to a Strange Land Of Children Not Yet Born

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If awards were given for the most bizarrely compelling dance event of the year, Bebe Miller's "Tiny Sisters in the Enormous Land" would certainly be a strong contender.

Nothing much happens in the full-evening piece, presented by the Bebe Miller Company on Saturday night at the Joyce Theater. Six women in simple, gathered frocks arrange and rearrange themselves onstage in changing light, to eerie atmospheric music, with soft-edged figures of other young women towering above them on a film screen at the back. But by the end of the hourlong dance, the six have come to seem like bewombed children stirring and poking through amniotic fluid to the harsh moment just before birth.

One inspiration for the piece was the story of the "silent twins," two girls growing up in an isolated rural area of England who communicated silently and only with each other. Ms. Miller recreates that feeling of isolation and mute discourse in "Tiny Sisters," a work that also serves as a metaphor for the silent language of dance. She and her dancers are gawky, inarticulate children, speaking in bursts of near-intelligible pronouncements from time to time as they prance, stalk and slip across the stage, four together and two apart.

Ms. Miller's unselfconscious staging is inspired, but she is also greatly helped by her collaborators. Michael Mazzola's sensitive lighting suggests shifts in time. Robin Holcomb's score, performed live by the pianist Gina Leishman and on tape, hints at a subtly shifting interior landscape. Kit Fitzgerald's exquisitely edited video and slide images, projected through gathered curtains, give "Tiny Sisters" the feel of a mythic journey. And the performances, as strongly acted as they are danced, catch just the right balance of fantasy and biting focus, in a cast that included Ms. Miller, Frances Craig, Sarah Gamblin, Heidi Henderson, Rebecca Wortman and Cheng-Chieh Yu. The text was by Holly Anderson.

A version of this review appears in print on April 23, 1996, on Page C00018 of the National edition with the headline: DANCE REVIEW;A Visit to a Strange Land Of Children Not Yet Born. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe